One of my all time favorite books isThe Four Agreementsby Don Miguel Ruiz. Living by the agreements has made my life easier and more manageable over the years, in all areas, especially love!

By applying these agreements to your love life, you can avoid the trap of “taking your loved one for granted” while deepening and enriching your relationship.

Here are the basic Four Agreements:

1) Be Impeccable With Your Word: This one is so simple: To me, being impeccable with your word is to keep your promises and to be sure to communicate changes in advance. Your soulmate should be able to count on you, always.

2) Don’t Take Anything Personallyand3) Never Make Assumptions: We are all imperfect beings and from time to time say things we don’t really mean. Jumping to conclusions (by making assumptions) isn’t the best way to go. Rather than let someone’s actions or words ruin our day, don’t run off seething: From a neutral place ask them for clarity, maybe even add some humor such as “I’m pretty sure that you didn’t mean to insult me just now when you said X,Y,Z?”

Most people never intentionally set out to harm you, yet we often overreact to things because we take it personally or make a wrong assumption. Communicating clearly and from the heart, without attack, will keep the love flowing. And remember, we are all personally responsible for our own happiness. If we put our happiness into the hands of someone else, they are sure to disappoint us.

4) Always do your best: If we wish to achieve our goals in life, striving to always do our best makes total sense. Make a point to always do your best with and for your partner.

The key to living these truths is to remember that according to Ruiz : “Awareness is always the first step because if you are not aware, there is nothing you can change. Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being our self is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people’s demands. We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

The freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves. But if we look at our lives, we will see that most of the time we do things just to please others, just to be accepted by others, rather than living our lives to please ourselves. When you transform your whole dream, magic just happens in your life. This is the mastery of intent, the mastery of love, the mastery of gratitude, and the mastery of life. This is the path to personal freedom.”

Everything we do and think affects the people in our lives, and the choices we make have far-reaching consequences. Known as the Ripple Effect, our connections stretch like an incredibly interwoven and complicated tapestry that we are all a part of. Thoughts and actions are like stones dropped in a pond and they create ripples that travel outward.

Each of us carries within us the capacity to change the world in small ways for better or worse. One inspiring example of the ripple effect appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine. It recently published a study that showed how a single altruistic kidney donation set off a domino effect, resulting in 10 successive transplants!

Will you join me his holiday season to collectively and consciously choose to add more love to the world?

Rescue a wallflower! Strike up a conversation with someone who’s standing alone at a party.

Think of the amazing people in your life, then send them a card telling them why they’re awesome.

I read about a family out to dinner with a special needs child. The kid was acting up and the waitress brought over a note that said “God only gives special children to special people” from a mystery guest who paid for the family’s meal.

If you are artistic, paint small rocks with words like “Believe” or “Have Faith” or “Love Will Find You” and leave in random places.

Spend a few minutes on www.freerice.com, a United Nations Food Program, that will donate rice to hungry people for every question you get right on their learningweb site. You can test your vocabulary, geography, chemistry and even answer SAT prep questions. It’s fun!

Pay for someone else’s coffee or their meal when you are in the drive through lane, pay the toll for the car behind you, or put coins in the street meters for someone else’s car.

Buy gift cards to Subway or McDonald’s and hand out to homeless people.

Pack up meals, socks, and goody bags to take to hand out to the homeless on the streets.

Help someone do a chore likeyardwork or shoveling snow.

Finally, another great reason for sharing your love and kindness is that it’s an oxytocin booster…this will reduce your stress, lower your blood pressure, and give you more pleasure!

I recently came across this beautiful story that is a great reminder of how precious life is. With the holidays coming up, I thought this was a good time to remember to make every moment a special occasion… for ourselves and our families.

A friend of mine opened his wife’s underwear drawer and picked up a silk paper-wrapped package:

‘This,’ he said, ‘isn’t any ordinary package.’

He unwrapped the box and stared at both the silk paper and the box.

‘She got this the first time we went to New York, 8 or 9 years ago. She has never put it on… was saving it for a special occasion. Well, I guess this is it.’

He got near the bed and placed the gift box next to the other clothing he was taking to the funeral home, his wife had just died.

He turned to me and said:

‘Never save something for a special occasion. Every day in your life is a special occasion’.

I still think those words changed my life.

Now I read more and clean less.

I sit on the porch without worrying about anything.

I spend more time with my family, and less at work.

I understood that life should be a source of experience to be lived up to, not survived…

I no longer keep anything.

I use crystal glasses every day…

I’ll wear new clothes to go to the supermarket, if I feel like it..

I don’t save my special perfume for special occasions, I use it whenever I want.

The words ‘Someday….’ and ‘ One Day…’ are fading away from my vocabulary.

If it’s worth seeing, listening or doing, I want to see it, listen to it or do it now….

I don’t know what my friend’s wife would have done if she had known she wouldn’t be there the next morning… this nobody can tell.

I think she might have called her relatives and closest friends.

She might have called old friends to make peace over past quarrels.

I’d like to think she would go out for Chinese, her favorite food.

It’s these small things that I would regret not doing, if I knew my time had come..

Each day, each hour, each minute, is special.

Live for today… tomorrow is promised to no-one….

I was grateful to learn this lesson many years ago from a friend who suggested that every time I sit down for a meal, even if I was home alone, that I use my best dishes, linen napkins, the good glasses and silverware. To this day, I still do this, often putting it all together on a beautiful tray and sometimes I add a little vase with a flower! It’s a way to make a snack or a meal special.

Remember to practice being a “pleasure pig” each and every day (I just got back from a 30-minute foot rub. Yum!). I would suggest that you look for ways to make every day a special occasion for yourself, your friends, and even strangers!

It’s true. Being right makes me happy, and conversely being wrong is upsetting for me.

Last week I was the most wrong I’ve ever been when my intuition was 100% off. Like most of the country, I thought Hillary Clinton was certain to be our next President.

I felt it in every cell of my body.

When I tuned into her on the Sunday before Election Day, I could “feel” her jubilation.

I could feel her excitement at becoming the first woman President.

It was so real for me.

I don’t claim to be a psychic, but when I “know” stuff, I know it 100% and for most of my life, I have been able to totally trust my intuition.

So, when Trump won, I was in double shock.

Shock that he would now be the leader of the free world (no need for a political debate here, lets just leave it at he and I don’t agree on a lot of major issues), but perhaps the bigger shock for me was that my intuition was so completely off.

For the past several days, I have been trying to figure out “why” I missed this.

And, now I believe that quite simply, I wasn’t supposed to know…

For whatever reason, being a part of the collective shock (for the 50%+` of us that were “with her”) is/was part of my destiny.

It’s been humbling.

Here’s what I still believe:

That the Universe has my back.

That good will come from this.

That the Law of Attraction works and I will continue to focus and feel my desires manifesting and will simultaneously understand that when it “appears” that things haven’t gone my way, ultimately it’s for a higher good and someday it will all make sense.

Here’s what I now know:

It’s time to step up and find more, better ways, to spread more love in the world.

Sarah Trimmer, who – after a devastating cancer diagnosis – decided to engage with her own health and recovery in an interesting way. She chose to focus her energy on elevating her own happiness every single day, with a simple and elegant technique. Twice a day (morning and night, no matter what difficulties she was facing) she would take a moment to complete these five sentences:

1) Today I am grateful for….

2) Today I helped someone by…

3) Something that made me happy today was…

4) Today I learned that…

5) Tomorrow I will….

This simple process turned Sarah’s life around and gave her joy and contentment. While she doesn’t know what the future holds, she is doing well now and is excited about her future.

Here’s how I answered these questions:

1) Today I am grateful for my current experience of santosha – utter contentment. Life isn’t perfect, but I am enjoying it exactly as it is.

2) Today I helped someone potentially reach more than 3 million people to view his passion project. Doing it was easy as can be and it felt so good to help.

3) Something today that made me happy was completing a writing project that turned out better than I hoped for.

4) Today I sadly learned that a former business associate died of cancer and it reminded me to appreciate every precious moment.

5) Tomorrow I will spend several hours teaching women how to manifest a soulmate knowing that 100% of them can be successful. I love sharing the excitement and possibilities!

Today, my friend and dating expert, Damona Hoffman, is sharing her dating formula that worked for her 13 years ago and it can work for you too:

The fairy tales and Disney movies I saw as a child brainwashed me, I believed that my Prince Charming was coming. If I was pretty enough, demure enough, and patient enough, one day he’d whisk me off to his castle and we’d live happily ever after.

After years of kissing frogs that never became princes, I came to the realization that this fairy tale was a BIG FAT LIE. At first, I was angry that I’d been tricked. I had achieved so much in my life, but finding love always seemed so elusive. It occurred to me that every time I felt stuck before – like when I wanted to get promoted at work or when I wanted to lose those annoying last 20 lbs – I had a plan. So, I created a dating plan for myself called Operation Date Nice Guys (no joke, I called it Operation DNG for short.) Here are the basic steps:

Step 1: GET CLEAR – The definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect different results, so you first have to get clear on who you want to meet. For me, I always became attached to emotionally unavailable men who made me feel worthless in a relationship. To me, a “nice guy” was someone who was respectful and thoughtful who would lift me up, not of erode my self-esteem.

Step 2: FIND A NEW POND TO FISH IN – If you go to the same places and talk to the same people, how do you expect to meet someone new? Online dating opened up hundreds of options to me (and this was 13 years ago) – now the possibilities are endless.

Step 3: BE PROACTIVE – This is the biggest dating challenge that I find with women today. We are so tied to the idea of chivalry that we were sold as kids, that we become stuck in a state of inaction. Just waiting for messages to come to you online means you’re missing out on the upper echelon of men. The men who are worth your time aren’t sending form letters to dozens of women. The high-caliber men are impressed by a confident woman who makes the first move. You also have to remember that in the first phase of online dating, you are dealing with computer algorithms, not chivalry. By initiating contact, you are programming the site to feature you more prominently and exponentially increasing your chances of making a match.

Step 4: TAKE YOUR TIME – We are in such a hurry to determine if someone is a match or not on the first date that many women are overlooking quality men because they didn’t feel that nebulous thing called chemistry. If you really want to know what someone is like, you have to get past the first date.

One night, I had a first date with a man whose profile name was Mr. Pandemonium (sounds delightfully dangerous, right?) Then, in walks a guy wearing Banana Republic, grey, wool pants and a conservative, black sweater with the collar of a green, button down shirt neatly placed over it and I wanted to run the other way. This man was distinctly not my type. “But he’s cute,” I thought. “Maybe I can set him up with someone else?”

Then, I remembered my plan – Operation Date Nice Guys. If I wanted a different result, I would have to do something different, feel something different, give a different kind of guy a chance. I didn’t get butterflies that first date, but what I got was so much better. I got my dream guy and we’re about to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.

Had I met him before my dating plan, I would have overlooked him because he wasn’t “my type”. In fact, I might not have even met him at all because he definitely wasn’t lurking in the same bogs as those frogs I’d been kissing.

If you’re ready to meet your Prince Charming too, you need a dating plan that works for you. The first step on that journey is the First Date Starter Kit which will offer you surefire solutions to meet more quality men and it will give you the tangible steps to take to prepare yourself for flawless first dates that lead to something more. If you’re ready to take control of your dating destiny, click here.

Sometimes we say we desire something, and then, when we examine our progress (or lack there of) it quickly becomes clear that our desire isn’t necessarily a priority. It’s more like a hope, or wish, or fantasy.

We rely on magical thinking rather than “working our personal magic.”

I know I am, at times, certainly guilty of this.

There are things I think about…a lot…but never really take action on…except to make up more excuses as to when I will begin or why I won’t be successful in attaining my desire.

What I know for sure is that, when I do turn my focus and attention on something really important to me, and I willing to make some effort, eventually I attain success.

But, until I get to the point of “going all in” and truly committing, I try to give myself a break and stop “shoulding” on myself, and allow myself to experience as much happiness and peace as possible with how things are right now.

For many of us, life is hectic and stress-filled, and for some, it’s even scary with all the instability in the world. Every day I receive a wisdom-filled email from Neale Donald Walsch. Here is a recent one that I especially love that addresses this issue:

On this day of your life

I believe God wants you to know…

…that this is not the end, but the beginning.

All endings start something better.

It is inevitable.

Here is God’s promise: Life proceeds, it never recedes.

Life progresses, it never regresses.

Not even death ends anything, so how much can this particular event matter?

It is true. When one door closes, another does open.

The movement of life is ever upward.

Six months from today you will know this. For now, trust it.

Do you think God does not know what She is doing?

Whether life is totally peachy or you are down in the dumps, it’s good to remember these words from Neale.

I know, trust and believe that the Universe always has our back and that “good” is always on the way.

Today I want to share a special story with you from my friend Debbie Lynn Grace. Debbie explains why so many people are “over-givers,” and what’s behind the urge to do that. Whether you are single, or in any kind of relationship in which you are over-giving, please read this.

When I was a child I wanted to be like everybody else. To fit in. To belong. I would look at all the kids around me and try to be like them so I would get accepted. And yet, no matter how much I tried, I had a label that followed me around and always made me feel different. I was called “too sensitive.” I could sense things or people around me that weren’t right. I would cry easily. And I would try to express my feelings, but all I got in return for my vulnerability was being told I’m too sensitive.

What I didn’t know at the time, is that there are people all over the world who are like me are called Highly Sensitive People. In fact, it’s been estimated that up to 20% of the population are born with a different wiring in your brain that results in you experiencing your senses more acutely than other people

Unfortunately, this knowledge wasn’t known then, so I had to figure out how to fit in through my own logic. I learned that if I couldn’t be like everybody else, then at least I could make people happy. I figured if I made them happy, then they would like me and not tease me.

By the time I entered the dating world, I really wanted a loving mate. And it came naturally to me to show my love for a man by being the giver. While I have a generous nature, I would unconsciously take giving to the extreme. I would look for ways to make my man happy and in the process, didn’t have any clue how to RECEIVE from the man and allow him to make me happy. And then when the man left, I’d wonder what was wrong with me.

Being an “over-giver” is a very common way that some one who is Highly Sensitive uses to cope with their sensitive nature. It’s a completely unconscious act, because we really do want others to be happy. Unfortunately, when you give to the point of depletion, especially in a personal relationship, you don’t allow yourself to receive. Which is the very thing you want – to receive love from your mate (and your friends, family and co-workers.)

Through my own personal development and upon discovering my true gift as an intuitive, I have not only come to peace with being a highly sensitive person. I embrace it as the beautiful gift that God bestowed upon me. And it led me to my life’s work to help others who are highly sensitive learn how to embrace their sensitive nature, have simple tools that help with their sensitivities, and to have thriving, loving relationships and an abundant and fulfilling life.

If you know that you are a “highly sensitive person” or an empath and have struggled in any aspect of your life because of your sensitive nature, I invite you to join me on October 18th for a call on “The Four Step Life Success Formula for Highly Sensitive People!” Click here to get complimentary access to the live webinar.

Just like the Law of Gravity is always working, whether you are aware of it or not, so the Law of Attraction is always working, bringing to you that which you focus on. Our monkey minds often try to scare us with thoughts about “what if” and “I never” and all kinds of junk. It’s up to us to be aware of these negative thoughts and then do something about them. Mindfulness Guru Barb Schmidt offers some very easy and practical tips below:

Use a positive affirmation to interrupt negative thoughts. “I trust the process of life.” “All is well.” “Everything is working out for my greatest good.”

One simple technique is repeating a positive affirmation in your head throughout the day.

We have on average 50,000 thoughts a day, and more than half of those are negative.

A positive and a negative thought cannot exist at the same time.

Choose a positive affirmation to replace negative thoughts.

Choose a phrase that feels right for you.

The most important thing is to settle on one word or phrase, and use it consistently every day.

Repeat this word or phrase often, not just when you are stressed. When you are waiting in line, when stuck in traffic, when you are in the shower, etc.

Interrupts the stream of habitual, negative thoughts.

Creates a new pattern of positivity.

Briefly reflect on your day before you fall asleep. What went well today? What can you let go of? What are three things you are grateful for?

Reflecting on your day before you fall asleep is so important because so many of us have trouble falling asleep or sleeping soundly.

Our minds are still going full speed and have trouble letting go of everything that happened during the day so that we can have a restful sleep.

Before bed take a few minutes to recap the events of the day. Note a few things that you are grateful for. One of them can be that you are alive and breathing.

Note what went well and what didn’t go well. Then let it go. Tell yourself that tomorrow is a new day.

Barb Schmidt is the author of the internationally best-selling book on mindfulness The Practice. She is a meditation teacher based out of Boca Raton. To find out more about being mindful, go to Barb’s website peacefulmindpeacefullife.org